Toys for the brain

Small Business Profile

Brian Fais can sympathize with the toddlers who get yanked away, sometimes kicking and screaming, from the knee-high wooden train table in the back of his Bethlehem store, Toy Magic.

He understands that while Mommy or Daddy scanned the shelves for a birthday present or Christmas gift, their child got deep into an imaginary world from which it is difficult to abruptly detach.

A former Air Products engineer who opened his first toy store in Wescosville 20 years ago, Fais discusses toys with the enthusiasm of a mad scientist. Talking about the products in his shop and his decision to open a store in the fiercely competitive retail industry, the conversation meanders from his boyhood experiences building model bridges and towns to mathematical principles he embraced as an engineer.

"The TV toys have a lot of built-in behaviors, because they're often designed to be characters in movies or TV or comics," Fais said. "If you have open-ended toys, you can use your imagination and do anything you want with them Being able to have something represent something else is a fundamental requirement for higher mathematics."

It's not the type of conversation you'd expect to have with the sales clerk in the toy aisle at Wal-Mart, assuming you can find one.

But Fais makes it clear that he is not competing with big-box stores. His store mostly offers niche, educational toys that are not mass-produced and not likely to be found at Target or Kmart. He's not selling toys. He's selling tools for the brain.

The narrow aisles of the small shop are packed with inventory. The offerings include the wooden bead roller coasters for toddlers that are often seen in doctor's offices, fake fruits and vegetables that can be cut in half with a wooden knife and put back together with Velcro, doll houses and accessories made of wood, not plastic, and good old-fashioned wooden block sets that can be used to make castles and forts.

In the front window along Main Street is a 6-foot Ferris wheel that Fais estimates has revolved 13 million times, burning through several motors. People ask about the Ferris wheel all the time, but he doesn't sell it. He's in discussions with the manufacturer, K'Nex, to sell a similar Ferris wheel kit.

Fais and his wife, Nellie Fais, opened their first store in 1987 in Wescosville. They later opened another shop in a west Allentown shopping center, and opened the existing store, on prime retail real estate in downtown Bethlehem, in 1998. They closed the other stores.

The Bethlehem site is ideal because it is centrally located in the Lehigh Valley, and it also gives him exposure to tourists who come to annual events such as Musikfest and the Celtic Classic, Fais said. He now has a database of customers spanning the globe, from France to Japan to South America, and he would like to open another location, ideally in the western part of the Lehigh Valley.

The life of a toy store owner is like those performers who spin plates on sticks. Parts are moving all the time and there is a lot to monitor. The store is open every day, it carries 20,000 items and the owners deal with several hundred vendors. Sometimes items ordered in January won't show up until November, or half will come in January and the other half will take months to arrive, he said.

And then, of course, there's the Christmas crunch, with the challenges that include trying to anticipate consumer demand and trying to keep the small store tidy.

"The Christmas season is very hectic," Fais said. "If it weren't a labor of love, we probably wouldn't do it."

There are between 2,500 and 3,000 independent toy stores in the country, said Kathleen McHugh, executive director of the American Specialty Toy Retailers Association in Chicago. They survive by offering unique toys not found in chain stores and not mass-produced, she said.

"These are toys that were made by inventors that didn't go mass market and they're not marketed at all," McHugh said. "Once children and adults play with these products, they become big hits without any advertising. There's no comparison in the mass market for some of these toys because they're so cool."

For Fais, the reward comes from having a base of loyal customers who know they can arrive a half-hour before the birthday party and find something they know will be a big hit. And in meeting young adults who come to the store and talk about toys they enjoyed as children that they got from his store.

"We've had professors and engineers and all kinds of professions who come back and thank us for being able to play with an Erector set or wooden trains or a chemistry set," Fais said. "They were inspired."

spencer.soper@mcall.com

610-820-6533

Toy Magic

Year started: 1987

Employees: Six

Address: 565 Main St. (in Main Street Commons at Main and Broad streets), Bethlehem

Contact: 610-865-7731; www.toymagiconline.com

Biggest challenge: No matter how much you prepare, the Christmas crunch

Quote: "We've had professors and engineers come back and thank us for being able to play with an Erector set or wooden trains or a chemistry set. They were inspired." Brian Fais, owner.